A look at the UN General Assembly voting dtata (1946-2015)

Did you ever wonder what impact your vote has on a global scale? Are the actions of your representatives in the United Nations General Assembly in line with your interests and hopes for the world ? Here you have a chance to answer these questions and also get an ideea about each country’s voting trends and the agreements and desagreements that these trends underline. The data comes from Erik Voeten Dataverse of the Harvard dataverse “This is a dataset of roll-call votes in the UN General Assembly 1946-2015. It also contains Affinity of Nations scores and ideal point estimates derived from these votes.” I also recomand reading Eric Voeten’s paper “Data and Analyses of Voting in the UN General Assembly” in which he provides a detiled descreption of the data, a brief history of the research on this topic as well as insights on some voting patterns.

Historic and evolution

Here we’ll look at varaition with time of tree main indictors of a country’s politics: * ratio of agreement, * “yes” vote ratio * ideal point.

The ratio of agreement between 0 and 1 shows how often a country agrees or disagrees with a given country (1 - always agrees, 0- always disagrees) . The ratio of agreement for some of the most influencial countries was analysed for each year in the 1946-2015 period (exepting 1964), providing a compelling image to the shift in the popularity of these countries over the years. For simplification the ratio of agreement was plotted each 10 years (excepting the first interval starting in 1946) for the United States of America, Russia, China, India, Isreal and Brasil. The peacks and the relative intensity of the curves show the general distribution of positions taken by the UNGA member countries each year.

Folowing the years after WW2 over 50 % of the UN member countries tended to agree with the United States of America while Rurssia was slightly les favored, both countries being relatively centerd. As the UNGA voting data shows things have evolved a lot since those times and the Unites States and Israel take now the least agreed upon possitions, with China being in amongst the most favored position and Russia moving away from China twards a centered position. In fact the data from 2015 shows Russia at little over 0.5 in the ratio of agreement, a position onece held by the United States of America. The causes for this fenomenon are unclear and the data can be influenced by new countries that join teh UNGA over the years as well as by actual shifts in policy of the existing countries. It is howerer clear that socialism evin in its extreem forms such as comunism or other autoriatrian regims tend to be very popular among the UNGA members and if you’re living in a country in which your government allows for a high degree of individual freedom, this might be concerning.

The ideal point is another indicator for a country’s political position and forign policy. It was proposed for the first time by Michael A Bialey et al in 2015 and “it reflects state positons twords a US-led liberal order” (or disorder dependening on how you look at it :) ) The ideal point underlines the shifts in the external politic trends and can be used to identivy voting blocs and their relative political positions.

A glimpse at the ideal point data shows the world political poles and their evolution with time. If in the late 40’s up to the 7O,s the global politics was split in 2 main blocks between the Unated States and Western Europe on one side and the eastrn Europe and the soviet block on the other, today things are significantly diferent especialy regarding the Russian position which has shifted since the 80’s all the way between the western block and China and other comunist and autoritarian countries that represent todays oposing pole to the US. Romania can be viewed here as an interesting indicator based on its geopolitical significance. Historicaly Romania has allways been at the crosrowds between the Est the West and the Middle-eastit acting as a buffer zone to western Europe against the expantion of the Otoman Empire and later against the expantion of the Soviet Union. In this sense Romania can be viewed as an indicator of the balance of power in a region known for it’s voltility.Once under the havy influence of the Soviet Union, Romania’s external politics is today consitent with the europen block, a poitic shift that may have started in the 70’s and culminated in 1990 with the fall of the comunist party as shown by the UNGA voting data. However Romania’s alignement with the EU seen in the last years might not last very long afer the 2016 parlamentary electoins. Perhapes after decades of comunist coruprion, experimenting with liberal values might bing out unexpected side efects like the resurgence of an evin more organised and welthy class of tirants ready to replunge the country into darkness. With the US falling apart and the EU under seige on every side Romania is on its own.

The yes vote ratio is a raw indicator of the country’s tendency to vote yes for the UNGA resolutions. If the idealpoint data and the ratio of agreement shows the relative political posiition of the UNGA member countries, the yes vote ratio is a direct indicator of the county’s voting patern for each of the 6 topics.

Here the data sows direcly a shift in the USA votting patern arround 1970, with a significant drop in the yes vote ratio since. Indeed the USA yes vote ratio is amongst the lowest in the UNGA on all topics. This is consistant with the USA being the country the least agread with and perhapes even more isolated after 2016. Clearly the “US-lead liberal order” has a problem with most of the UNGA resolutions, unlike other countries like Saudi Arabia and China that rarely vote other than yes. In fact the yes ratio of China and Saudi Arabia tends to corelate very well especially on human rights which is surprising since both countries are famous for their “alternative” aproach to the mater. None of this seems to mater in the end. Aldough the United States of America and Saudi Arabia are at oposite poles regarding the UNGA voting data, the two countries have long been and remain strong military allays and economic parteners. In fact the two countries are so close they could make the UE gelous for being so united by diversity. It could explain why the EU is trying so hard to please the Saudy King as well, but I feal we’re getting of topic.

Today’s wold

The median ideal point data after 1990 reveals 2 miain voting blocks, with the United States of America and Israel being somewhat isolated on one side.

On one side there is the United States of America and Israel with the closest voting body of about 53 countries including the European Union. The bigest voting bloc of about 140 countries however seems to be made up of mostly comunist countries or countries gouverned by diferent autoritarian regims. Russia tends to be somewhat in the middle between the two main blocs and given recent world political shifts noticed in 2017 Russia might tend to align more with the EU voting block. Russia’s political shift over the years twords a more western position can also be observed by looking at its agreement ratio.

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